"
"Driving from Jiujiang to Lin'guan Village takes at least an hour. If we wait for them to get here before going in, it'll be dawn by then."
Chen Ge and the others had been walking through the mountain forest for nearly two hours, and still there was no sign of any village — only mountain after mountain stretching into the distance.
"But can the three of us really handle this?" Lao Wei's worry was that if things went south, they'd have to spare someone to look after Uncle Bai.
"It's not a big deal." Chen Ge had initially been concerned about Uncle Bai's stamina too, but after walking for an hour, he realized those worries were unfounded.
Having grown up in the mountains, Uncle Bai was not only physically robust but intimately familiar with the forest environment.
"What are you two whispering about?" Uncle Bai walked ahead, using a tree branch as a walking stick. "Up ahead there's a fork in the road. Going over the mountain ridge will add a long detour — about two more hours before we reach the destination. But if we cut through the middle of the valley, we can get to
"The path through the valley isn't easy to walk, is it?" Chen Ge understood perfectly that if Uncle Bai was specifically bringing it up, there had to be a reason.
"No, it isn't." Uncle Bai's expression turned grave. "There are ghosts in the valley."
"Ghosts are fine. I thought you were going to say wolves." Chen Ge patted his backpack, and the white cat stuck its head out through the zipper gap, clearly displeased.
"No, I've always been curious — in your world, are wolves more terrifying than ghosts?" Uncle Bai leaned on his branch, completely unable to comprehend Chen Ge's way of thinking.
"Ghosts are insubstantial, but wolves are real." Lao Wei didn't believe in that supernatural stuff either.
Chen Ge rolled his eyes but didn't argue. "Then we'll go through the valley."
"You'd better think this through. There are things in this world that are truly hard to explain." Uncle Bai asked for their opinion once more.
"Uncle Bai, did something happen to you in the past?" Chen Ge could tell from the old man's unnatural expression that he was very reluctant to enter the valley. "You clearly know this path well — you've walked it more than once before. We're all trying to rescue a child here. I hope you're not deliberately hiding anything from us."
"I've never hidden anything. I was just afraid you wouldn't believe me if I told you." For the first time, Uncle Bai began to speak of his younger years. "My father knew a bit about medicine and pathology. Back in the 1940s and '50s, when smallpox and measles were running rampant, he traveled to nearly every mountain village in the area. That was when he discovered Coffin Village."
"The village was completely isolated from the outside world. Almost nobody there could read, and when people fell sick, they had to tough it out with their own folk remedies. By the time my father arrived, the epidemic in the village was already quite severe."
"He went there several times to treat the villagers."
"I was young back then. My father wanted me to learn medicine so I could make a living from it, so sometimes he'd bring me along on his house calls."
"The first few times we went through the valley, nothing happened. But one time, my father got into an argument with someone from Coffin Village. I don't know exactly what it was about."
"We usually left around two or three in the afternoon, but that day we didn't leave Coffin Village until evening."
"The sky outside the village was still light, so my father and I didn't think much of it and entered the valley."
"When we were about halfway through, my father suddenly urged me from behind to walk faster."
"I figured if we got home early, we could still have a hot meal, so I picked up my pace."
"But after a while, I heard him urging me again from behind — to walk even faster."
"That was when I sensed something was wrong. I was just about to turn my head to look back when my father's hand clamped over my eyes."
"He kept telling me to walk faster. I peeked through the gaps between his fingers toward what was behind us."